


Never Lag Behind

by Sarashina_Nikki



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarashina_Nikki/pseuds/Sarashina_Nikki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natsume napping on his desk was a common sight, one that everyone in class C had long since grown used to. (Although the teachers seemed to find it less and less amusing as time wore on.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esmenet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmenet/gifts).



Natsume napping on his desk was a common sight, one that everyone in class C had long since grown used to. (Although the teachers seemed to find it less and less amusing as time wore on.)

When the math teacher briefly stopped giving him the hairy eyeball and turned around to write a problem on the blackboard, Nishimura took the chance to chuck his eraser at Natsume's head. It bounced off and hit Sasada, who whirled around and glared at him over the top of her glasses. Natsume, of course, slept on undisturbed.

Nishimura exchanged a glance with Kitamoto, who leaned over to prod Natsume with his pencil.

"Psst. Psst, Natsume. Wake up!" Kitamoto hissed.

Natsume's face creased briefly, a pained kind of expression Nishimura had never seen him show anyone while awake, then slackened again.

"Natsume!"

"Give it a rest, Kitamoto-kun." Yamaoka-sensei crossed her arms, mouth tight with annoyance as the class tittered. "We wouldn't want to interrupt Natsume-kun's beauty re--"

Then Natsume screamed and fell out of his chair. Nishimura laughed, thinking he'd startled awake at a bad dream, and then Natsume started to convulse. The class erupted in alarm.

"Natsume!" Nishimura lunged out of his desk. "What's wrong!" He reached for Natsume's arm only to be kicked with enough force to knock him back against the wall.

"Get away get away get away --" Natsume choked, clawing at his neck.

Yamaoka-sensei knelt by his head, hands hovering mid-air like she was afraid to touch him. "Someone get the nurse, quickly!" Sasada took off like a sprinter.

Natsume flailed against the floor, desperate jerky movements cut off half way, lips tinging blue. Then he kicked out into the empty air and Nishimura stumbled back a step at the sudden gust of wind.

Natsume scrambled to his feet, back to the wall, hands clenched in fists. "Get...away," he gasped again, chest heaving.

"Natsume-kun, are you..." Yamaoka-sensei reached towards him, then stopped and drew her hand back. "Are you all right? Is it...do you have...asthma?" she finished weakly.

Natsume's eyes darted around the classroom wildly without meeting anyone's gaze. Slowly, he grabbed the strap of his book bag and pulled it to himself protectively. Then he stilled, staring off into space with a face pale as death. "I need to go to the nurse," he said abruptly.

"Y-Yes? Of course, are you --"

"I'm fine. It's nothing," he said and would have sounded completely lucid if it weren't for the scary way his eyes fixed on the middle distance like someone hypnotized, the line of his body drawn and tensed.

Kitamoto took a tentative step towards him. "Why don't we come with --"

Natsume bolted. "DON'T COME!" But instead of heading down the open aisle to the front of the classroom, he shoved through the crowd and leaped over the desks blocking him from the rear door. He burst out of the classroom and another violent gust of wind rattled the windows, sending all the loose papers swirling through air.

Class C stood frozen in his wake, staring at each other in shocked silence as papers slowly fluttered down around them.

Nishimura bent to pick up one of his math worksheets from the floor. "That wind..." He caught Kitamoto's eyes and together they turned to look at the windows that lined the wall of the classroom, each and every one locked shut.

"Sensei, I think we should go make sure Natsume gets to the nurse's office okay," Kitamoto said, although the way he was hurriedly shoving things into his bag and shrugging on his coat belied his intent. Nishimura immediately followed suit.

He grabbed Natsume's coat as well, knocked aside in the confusion and left abandoned on the floor despite being the middle of January.

"Yes, yes, go." Yamaoka-sensei waved her hands at them, frazzled, and they took off in pursuit.

They dashed by Sasada, rounding the corner in the opposite direction with the school nurse. "Hey, wait! Where are you going? Where's Natsume-kun?"

Nishimura waved at her over his shoulder. "We'll take care of him, don't worry!"

They paused at the shoe lockers and Kitamoto peered into Natsume's. "His shoes are still here, did he really leave?"

Nishimura shoved on his own without fixing the laces. "You really think he stopped to change his shoes?"

"No," Kitamoto agreed grimly.

They went down the school's driveway at a trot, craning their necks as they looked around. "Natsume!" "Natsumeeee! Where are you?"

Kitamoto shivered, hugging himself against the cold. "Did he go home?"

"There!" Nishimura pointed to a trail solitary footprints in the ankle deep snow, veering off through the back lot towards into the woods behind the school. "Come on."

Nishimura and Kitamoto didn't speak as they followed and the only sound that broke the heavy silence was the muffled crunch of snow underfoot.

Then the tracks stopped.

"Seriously?" Nishimura leaned his hands on his knees to catch his breath, the chill of the freezing air burning his thoat. "C'mon, Natsume, give me a break."

Kitamoto cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. "NATSUMEEEEE! ARE YOU HERE? ANSWER!"

"Nyan!"

Nishimura straightened. "Did you hear that?"

"Nyan nyan!"

Kitamoto blinked. "Sounds like a cat."

"Sounds like an ugly ass calico cat that follows Natsume everywhere, that's what it sounds like." Nishimura skidded down the nearby slope, wincing at the wet slush seeping into his socks. "This way."

"There!" Kitamoto pointed into the field at the bottom of the hill, where they could see a figure lying in the snow, his clothes a shock of dark color against the blinding white glare all around them.

"Oh shit." Nishimura scrambled after him. "Natsume! Are you hurt?"

Natsume was prone on the ground in nothing but his uniform and school slippers, flesh pinked from the cold bite of the snow and breathing shallowly. The fat calico sat on his chest, watching unimpressed at their panicked approach.

"Shit." Nishimura dropped to his knees beside Natsume's still form, putting one hand against his frozen cheek. "Natsume, wake up. Natsume. Come on, man, this is so not funny." The cat hissed when he shoved it off, but Natsume made no response and his head lolled to one side like a rag doll as Nishimura wrapped Natsume's coat around him.

Kitamoto turned in a slow circle, staring at the empty field. Except for their own footprints, there was nothing but pristine unbroken snow surrounding them, more than two hundred yards from where Natsume's tracks had stopped. "What...happened here?"

The muffled thump of snow falling off the branches of a tree made the hair on the back of Nishimura's neck stand up, and when the ugly cat growled low in its throat and raised its hackles, glaring into the forest, his heart started to pound.

"I don't know," he said, "but let's get the fuck out of here."

"Yeah," Kitamoto agreed hurriedly and crouched down. "Put him on my back, I'll carry him."

Nishimura helped lift Natsume's limp body and Kitamoto stood with a grunt, Natsume draped over his shoulders piggyback.

"He's not heavy, is he?" Nishimura grabbed Natsume's bag where it had been lying protected underneath him.

"Are you kidding?" Kitamoto hopped a little to hike him up more. "This kid is nothing but skin and bones. Though I don't know how, with what Touko-san feeds him."

Nishimura glanced around uneasily. "Okay, let's go."

They made a strange procession through the oppressively silent forest, with Natsume's ugly cat for a rearguard, and it wasn't until they got closer to the busy residential streets that Nishimura started to relax finally.

"This..." Kitamoto glanced at him. "He'll be fine if we just bring him home, right? He doesn't need, like...to go the hospital. Right?"

"Touko-san will take care of him," Nishimura said, trying to sound more sure than he felt. "He'll be fine. I mean, come on, it's Natsume, how many times has this happened now? He's always fine."

"...Right."

"I mean, remember that time when he made us tramp all over the woods for hours and then he fainted with a fever and we had to haul him home? And that time he fell in the river? And then there was that time at the school festival too." Nishimura nodded firmly, warming to the topic. "He's so accident prone, jeez. But he's a resilient little fucker, this time'll be no different."

"Yeah. But..." Kitamoto grimaced, then said reluctantly, "But he also never flipped out and started choking for no reason before either."

Nishimura glanced away. "That's..."

"What?"

"I have seen this happen once before."

Kitamoto stumbled and Nishimura jumped to steady him before Natsume could tumble off. He looked at Nishimura with wide eyes. "What? When?"

Nishimura shrugged defensively. "I don't know, a while ago. It wasn't this dramatic or anything, but it was kinda like he was being strangled, except there was no one there. And then he took off all of a sudden, just like today."

Kitamoto contemplated this. He slanted his eyes to the side, where Natsume's head slumped over his shoulder. "Natsume's kinda...sometimes..."

"Yeah," Nishimura sighed. "He really is."

They stared at him for a long moment.

"NYAAA."

"AH!" Nishimura jumped back holding his shin. "What the -- damn cat scratched me!"

The cat glared up at him. "Nyan," it said contemptuously.

"Shut up, I didn't mean it in a bad way! He's our friend, we're just worried about him!"

"Nishimura," Kitamoto said, "are you arguing with a cat?"

"...No."

"Okay then."

The cat sniffed and waddled past them up the street that led to Natsume's house.

At Natsume's front gate two people loitered, attempting to seem nonchalant, although the way they stood huddled close together arguing in vehement whispers dispelled the illusion. Nishimura recognized them as class D's Taki and class A's Tanuma.

Nishimura narrowed his eyes. Those two had been pretty buddy buddy with Natsume recently, which was something odd enough in itself, but their conversations when overheard were always full of strange ellipses and oblique 'you know's. And it was only by chance that Nishimura ever overheard any of their conversations at all, because Natsume made a noticeable effort to keep his interactions with them separate from his other friends.

Friends who had worked their butts off for months to get him to open up even a little, Nishimura thought somewhat resentfully. Whereas whatever it was that Natsume shared with Taki and Tanuma had seemingly sprung up overnight by magic.

Of course, Nishimura decided, smiling a bit against his will as Taki turned towards them and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, if there was anything shady going on then that kid Tanuma must be completely to blame. Taki was just so --

"Ohhhh, he's just so cute!" Taki cried, her bright eyes lighting up as she saw them.

Nishimura stopped in his tracks, eyes wide. "C--cu--"

Taki pounced. "Oh, Nyanko-sensei, I missed you!"

Nishimura blinked. Taki had swept Natsume's ugly cat up into her arms and was cuddling him to within an inch of his life, if the squirming and hissing were any indication.

Kitamoto took one glance at the look on Nishimura's face and had to turn his head to one side, unsuccessfully trying to stifle his snickers.

Nishimura glared. "Shut up," he hissed.

Tanuma stepped forward to meet them. "We heard about what happened, how's Natsume?" He looked more concerned than shady at the moment, but.

"It's fine, he just fainted AGAIN," Nishimura said, trying to make a show of how exasperated and aggrieved he was by this completely common and utterly unnoteworthy occurrence.

"His clothes are soaked through from the snow, we should get him inside so Touko-san can take care of him," Kitamoto added and moved to walk around the other two.

"Hey, wait, what's on his hand?" Tanuma caught Natsume's arm as Kitamoto went by and shoved up his sleeve to peer at the back of his hand and forearm, brow furrowed.

Nishimura stared, feeling a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold weather. "What are you talking about?"

Tanuma glanced up, surprised. "What?"

"Tanuma-kun, we can't see anything," Taki said, voice low and full of meaning. The cat sat quietly in her arms now, eyes fixed on Natsume's arm. It almost looked --

Absolutely not, Nishimura told himself severely. Cats did not get worried.

Tanuma dropped Natsume's arm like a hot poker. "Oh, uh, oh. Sorry. Just, um, a trick of the light." He ran his fingers through his hair nervously and, okay, now he looked really shady.

Nishimura exchanged a glance with Kitamoto and then noticed Taki and Tanuma doing the same opposite them.

"Okay!" Kitamoto said with forced cheer. "Let's move the party inside."

"Um, yes, um, Tanuma-kun and I actually have to go do this thing. Right now. With, uh, Nyanko-sensei. So we're going to go do that, please take care of Natsume-kun! I'm sure he's totally fine, no need to worry, okay, bye now!" Taki suddenly took off, cat under one arm like a sack of rice, towing Tanuma along with her other.

Nishimura and Kitamoto watched them go.

"Hey, remember when she wouldn't talk to us at all? You know, back before she started hanging out with Natsume."

"Shut UP."

Touko-san received them with concern, but not particularly much surprise. Nishimura thought of those days every once in a while when Natsume would stay home from school, only to appear the next day with the circles under his eyes even darker than they usually were.

This type of thing probably happened even more often than anyone knew, Nishimura concluded as he and Kitamoto helped Touko-san carry Natsume upstairs and lay him out on his futon.

Touko-san smiled at them with tired eyes from where she knelt beside her foster son. "Thank you for bringing him home, boys."

Nishimura gazed at Natsume's unconscious form, eyes lingering on the unblemished skin of his right arm that Tanuma had found so disturbing.

"I hope he feels better tomorrow," Kitamoto said. "We'll bring his school work by in the afternoon if he's not."

They were silent as they showed themselves out, taking the chance to turn the day's events over in their minds, now that Natsume had been safely conveyed into Touko-san's good care.

Outside, Nishimura shivered and wished he'd remembered to grab his scarf.

"What do you think?" Kitamoto asked quietly.

"I don't know what to think," Nishimura admitted.

"Do you think those two know what's going on?"

Nishimura grabbed Kitamoto's arm and hauled him to a stop as they approached the next street, hearing Taki and Tanuma arguing with each other out of sight around the corner of the retaining wall. "Something tells me yes," he said lowly.

"But what if it's a curse!" That was Taki's voice, high pitched with nerves. Kitamoto met Nishimura's eyes and mouthed the word 'curse' to him in disbelief.

"Sensei," and that was Tanuma, "what do you think?"

"I think Natsume's gotten himself tied up in something that doesn't concern him again," an unfamiliar third voice groused. It sounded like the voice of an old man.

Nishimura glanced at Kitamoto in question, but only got a helpless shrug in reply. He didn't recognize the third person either.

"I recognized the one who attacked him, she lives near Yatsuhara but is pretty famous for keeping to herself. I don't know what would make her act like this all of a sudden, or for what purpose she marked him."

The old man sounded frustrated, but Tanuma seemed less than impressed. "You know, you're not doing that great a job here as a bodyguard, Sensei."

"Tanuma-kun!" Taki objected defensively, "Nyanko-sensei is doing his best!"

Nishimura and Kitamoto stared at each other. As one they lunged around the corner to see not three people, but two. Two people and one cat.

"Oh, great. Just I what needed," Nyanko-sensei said.

Everyone stared at each other from a long moment.

"I think we need to talk," Nishimura said, trying to sound totally cool and not freaking out in any way. Although he suspected that if his face was as pale as Kitamoto's, it probably didn't come off quite as well as he hoped. Especially when he then had to punctuate this statement with a surreptitious sniffle, his nose running from being out in the cold so long.

Tanuma cleared his throat awkwardly. "Why don't we, uh, why don't we go to my house and, um, talk. I live near Yatsuhara, maybe, um, maybe together we can...figure out what's going on."

"You mean like." Kitamoto swallowed. "Like, why is Natsume's cat talking?"

"Hey, brat!" Nyanko-sensei growled, "You should show some your elders some respect."

"Um, no." Taki smiled weakly. "That's normal."


	2. Chapter 2

"Here, please help yourself." Tanuma set down the tray with a clink, serving mugs of hot tea for the awkward crowd that had descended on his house. Everyone immediately busied themselves with drinking and avoiding eye contact.

"Thanks," Nishimura mumbled after a minute, not really knowing how to react to wild tales of potential curses and talking cats who were bodyguards and Natsume being chased by gusts of wind and strangled by invisible monsters and, really, what the fuck.

He decided that was probably as good a reaction as any. "So," he said, putting his cup back down. "What the fuck?"

Nyanko-sensei stared him down impassively from his place at the head of the table, paws folded snugly against his rotund body. "Watch it, boy."

"And you -- you're supposed to be a bodyguard? Then what the hell are you doing here when there's some invisible monster on the hunt after Natsume! You should be watching over him," Nishimura accused.

"Hmph!" Nyanko-sensei glared baleful green eyes at him. "I placed a barrier around Natsume's room. A no-name mid-level youkai like that one could never hope to break a barrier set by such a noble and powerful creature as myself. No." The cat shook his head. "More than the youkai herself, what I'm worried about is that mark. I don't recognize it, but youkai use marks for all manner of things, none of them good."

Kitamoto fumbled his mug and narrowly escaped spilling hot tea down his uniform shirt. "T-Things? Like what?"

It was Taki who answered, tapping her winter-chapped lips absently as she thought. "Marks can facilitate possession, leech someone's spiritual energy, or designate someone as they prey." She paused, looking a bit queasy, and when she tried to smile it came out as a half-grimace. "That's how Natsume-kun and I met," she admitted. "A youkai was going to eat me."

The others stared at her with wide eyes.

Then Taki smiled again, more naturally. "But Natsume-kun and Nyanko-sensei saved me! So, don't worry."

Tanuma leaned forward. "Sensei, how can we help?"

"You amateurs?" Nyanko-sensei scoffed. "No way. Leave this to my vast knowledge and experience, brats like you need to stay out of the way. The last thing I need is more weak human children running around sticking their noses into dangerous business."

This determined, condescending statement was somewhat undermined by the fact that he started purring in the middle when Taki couldn't take it anymore and leaned over to scritch him under the chin.

"You've got a weird hobby," Kitamoto told her.

She just grinned at him in reply.

"Well, we can research the mark though, can't we? Maybe if I drew a picture of it so everyone could see." Tanuma tried.

"Oh, yes!" Taki nodded vigorously. "My family used to be an old onmyouji line, we're sure to find something in my library."

"Ah!" Nyanko-sensei hopped up as a thought occurred to him. "That's not too bad an idea. But wait on those books for a bit, I'm going to bring in an specialist." He waddled to the outside wall of the tatami room and looked at Tanuma expectantly. "Open."

Tanuma obediently cracked open the sliding door and the cat bounded through.

Nishimura watched him disappear into the snow. "So, when he says 'specialist'..."

"Probably a youkai," Tanuma confirmed. "You won't be able to see it though. The youkai world is impossible to see under normal circumstances, unless a person is sensitive to them."

Nishimura thought about the things people said about Tanuma: that he fell ill easily, that sometimes he would startle for no reason, or claim to see things that weren't there. The same things people said about Natsume.

"You can see them?" Kitamoto asked, having followed a similar thought pattern. "Like...like Natsume does?"

Tanuma glanced away, gazing up at the far corner of the ceiling for some reason with an odd twist to his lips. "No, not like Natsume. I see shadows sometimes, faint impressions. I can't talk to them or interact with them really."

"Natsume has a lot of trouble," Taki said softly. "I'm sure you've noticed. He sees everything so clearly, it's impossible for him to tell whether what he sees is real or not."

Nishimura and Kitamoto exchanged a look. The number of times Natsume had said he'd seen something that no one else could were countless, often on a daily basis. Sometimes it was creepy, but for the most part they had just accepted that, well, that was just how Natsume was.

"According to my family's records, it's very rare for someone to have that high a level of spiritual energy," Taki added. "And most people can never see them at all without -- oh!" She straightened.

Tanuma glanced up, having retrieved a piece of paper on which he was attempting to reproduce the mark he'd seen on Natsume's arm. "What?"

"My circle."

Tanuma blinked. "Your what?"

"Oh." Taki blinked back at him. "I never told you? It's a technique I found in my family's books, that I used to talk to youkai during those months that I was cursed. It's a, well, magic circle I suppose. Any youkai inside of it can be seen by the human eye."

Tanuma stared at her, momentarily dumbfounded by the very idea.

Taki stood up in a rush and threw open the door to the temple yard again. She grinned at them. "Tanuma-kun, finish your sketch. You two, come help me clear the snow. When Nyanko-sensei's 'specialist' gets here, you'll get to see your first youkai."

Nishimura glanced at Kitamoto, who shrugged good-naturedly and clambered to his feet. Nishimura grimaced against the chill, but did likewise. They followed Taki's instructions, although Nishimura kept catching out of the corner of his eye Tanuma staring at them with an odd indecipherable expression on his face, like he was caught between opposing emotions.

When they finished they sat together on the wooden patio, watching Taki painfully carve squiggly lines and strange symbols into the cold, packed winter earth. Tanuma pushed away from the table and came to sit beside them.

"Here," he said, holding out the drawing.

Nishimura glanced down and recoiled. Twisted black lines twined around the sketched representation of a hand, crawling up the arm like vines.

"That's so freaking creepy," Kitamoto said and quickly handed it back, like he couldn't bear to look at it any longer.

"Yeah," Tanuma agreed.

Taki finished her work and settled beside them, breathing on her hands to keep them warm. Nishimura wanted to talk with her, to ask her about her curse and her family and how she met Natsume and why she wouldn't speak to him for so long. But he didn't know what to say, or how to bring it up, so he just hummed awkwardly under his breath instead.

Eventually Nyanko-sensei did reappear and hopped up beside them. "All right brats, show us what you've got."

Nishimura wrinkled his nose. "You smell like -- did you drink SAKE?"

"You know," Kitamoto began reasonably, "a bodyguard really shouldn't be drinking on the--"

"Um, more importantly, shouldn't a CAT not be drinking, uh, AT ALL?"

"So noisy." The cat glowered. "I could eat you, you know."

"Uh, anyway." Tanuma held the paper. "Here's what I remember seeing. Sensei, does this look about right to you?"

Nyanko-sensei squinted at the paper, then grunted. "Not bad." Then he tilted his head and looked off into empty space. "What do you think?"

The sketch slipped out of Tanuma's hand like it had only been tugged by the wind, but then it fluttered back a step and the slender figure of a dark-haired women in a beautiful kimono materialized out of thin air. She peered at the circle admiringly, then turned her heavy-lidded gaze to the line of shocked faces before her. Even having been expecting it and, in Taki's case, having seen it happen many times, it was still such an amazing, shocking, and bizarre thing to see.

"Ohhh!" The woman's face flushed with excitement. "You must be a Taki! It must have been 300 years since I last saw one of these, that tricky old onmyouji trying to trap me in a jar, and would have succeeded too if not for that lovely, lovely wife of his, what a waste on a nasty man like that. Oh, Kasumi," she clasped her hands together, lost in reminiscence, "how delicious she was."

"..."

The woman's hungry eyes lit on Taki again. "And don't you look just like her!"

"Um--" Taki's eyes were like dinner plates.

Nyanko-sensei chortled wickedly, the gleeful expression of one about to witness recompense for past injustices.

"So cute!" The woman pounced. But, of course, as soon asshe stepped out of the circle she became immaterial again and Taki's hair only waved slightly as a cold wind swept through the empty air around her.

Nyanko-sensei sighed then. "All right, enough, Hinoe."

After a moment the youkai slinked back into the circle, seemingly for politeness' sake. She sighed and cast a longing glance at Taki, who eeped and buried her face in her scarf, blushing. "All right, all right," Hinoe said. She smoothed the crumpled edges of Tanuma's drawing and peered at it with businesslike concentration.

"Well, that looks something intended to affect the memory," she said after a minute.

"Affect in what way? Why put it on Natsume?" Nyanko-sensei leaned forward intently. For all of his complaining, he was completely focused when it mattered.

"Well, it doesn't seem malicious..." Hinoe hedged. "Who did this? You said you recognized the youkai?"

"Mm. I was surprised," Nyanko-sensei admitted grudgingly. "It was that antisocial nekomata that lives in the forest near here. You know, that one that hasn't spoken to a soul in half a century."

"Nekoma--" Hinoe paused. "Oh, perhaps that's why."

Everyone sat up a little straighter at that.

"A long time ago there were two nekomata in this forest," Hinoe explained. "One of them disappeared, left or was eaten or sealed, I don't know. But the other one never recovered and started causing a lot of trouble around this area. She had a run-in with Natsume Reiko eventually and lost badly, I think, although as far as I know Reiko didn't take her name. I don't know why. But after that the nekomata kept to herself.

Hinoe laid a delicate fine-boned hand against her cheek as she thought. "That incident is probably involved, though what this nekomata hopes to get out of Reiko's grandson I haven't the faintest idea."

"I know what she wants."

Everyone whirled around. And standing there at the edge of Tanuma's yard, looking peaked but determined, was Natsume. He was swaddled up in his warm clothing and the color in his cheeks was still a bit off, but he smiled at them and self-consciously waved hello. He held a wrapped bundle securely under one arm.

"It was a misunderstanding," he told them. "She didn't mean me any harm really, she just wanted my help."

"Your help?" Nyanko-sensei's voice was skeptical. "Then what about that curse mark?"

Natsume pushed up his sleeve a bit, just to show that it was already gone. "She just wanted to explain things to me."

"Ahhh." Hinoe sighed as she looked at the sketch again and made the connection that had eluded her before. "This is for HER memories."

"Yeah," Natsume agreed. "She wanted me to bring something to her." His eyes darted towards Nishimura and Kitamoto, then away, then settled at some point in the air over their heads. "Um. Hi."

Kitamoto coughed. "Hey, man."

Nishimura leaned over, trying to catch Natsume's eye. After a minute, Natsume reluctantly met his gaze, looking pale and scared but trying not to be.

"Hey," Nishimura said and smiled.

Slowly, Natsume smiled back. Then he turned his head away, blinking rapidly. He cleared his throat. "Thank you, everyone. For...being here for me. I can take care of everything from here."

"You have an inflated sense of your own abilities, brat," Nyanko-sensei scoffed. "Always getting yourself in over your head, tangled up in somebody else's trouble."

Natsume turned back then, grinning unrepentant, though his eyes were suspiciously bright. "Sorry to trouble you, Sensei."

"So, what did the nekomata want?" Taki cuddled Nyanko-sensei to herself, looking like she was fighting the urge to cuddle Natsume himself at that moment.

Natsume grinned at them crookedly, gently cradling the package he was carrying. "Sorry, it's a secret. My grandmother didn't take her name, but she took something else that belonged to her, something of her friend's. Reiko promised to return it if Nekomata-san reformed her behavior, but I guess she forgot."

Hinoe covered her mouth as she laughed. "That sounds like my Reiko!"

Natsume flushed, looking embarrassed by his grandmother's past indiscretions. He directed his eyes slightly behind where Hinoe stood in the middle of Taki's circle and bowed formally, holding out the package with both hands. "Here," he said, "go in peace."

At first it was just a thin, furred hand that extended into the edge of the circle to receive, but then the youkai stepped in fully and Nishimura had to hold his breath in order not to gasp. The talking cat was hideously ugly, but still looked like a normal cat. Hinoe-san had a certain inhuman cast to her face, but overall looked and sounded like a normal woman. This youkai stood upright and wore kimono not unlike Hinoe, but she looked like some creature escaped from a horror film, caught somewhere in between cat and person. Two long tails whipped about her legs independently of one another and Nishimura couldn't help but stare, picturing this creature crouched over Natsume's helpless body, strangling him with those wickedly clawed hands.

But she took the package Natsume held out to her reverently and when she said, "Thank you," her low purring voice was heartfelt and sincere.

The nekomata hugged the bundle to her chest and bowed to Natsume once, deeply in return. Then...

"Where'd she go?" Kitamoto asked, watching with wonder as the youkai dissolved into bright clouds of light that then dispersed like a subtle mist.

"Sometimes this happens with youkai who need to rest," Natsume explained, looking equal parts wistful and hopeful. "I don't know where it is they go, but maybe her friend is waiting for her there."

"I bet she is." Nishimura slung a cheerful arm over Natsume's shoulders. "That's what friends do, after all."

**Author's Note:**

> 雲ゐにもかよふ心のおくれねばわかると人に見ゆばかりなり
> 
> Kumoi ni mo  
> kayou kokoro no  
> okureneba  
> wakaru to hito ni  
> miyu bakari nari
> 
> This spirit of mine,  
> no stranger to cloudy realms,  
> will never lag behind:  
> It is but an illusion  
> that we two are parting
> 
> \--Kokinshu #378: composed for a beloved friend.


End file.
